1. Field
Embodiments generally relate to reporting of business data in documents using the eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL), and more particularly to systems and methods for automated taxonomy migration in an XBRL document.
2. Related Art
XBRL is a standardized computer language by which businesses may efficiently and accurately communicate business data with each other and with regulating agencies. [See Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) 2.1, available at http://www.xbrl.org/Specification/XBRL-RECOMMENDATION-2003-12-31+Corrected-Errata-2005-04-25.rtf, and Recommendation 2003-12-31+Corrected Errata-2005-04-25 available at http://www.xbrl.org/Specification/XBRL-RECOMMENDATION-2003-12-31+Corrected-Errata-2005-04-25.html.] It is a markup language not too dissimilar from XML (eXtensible Markup Language) and HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language). HTML was designed to display general-purpose data in a standardized way, XML was designed to transport and store general-purpose data in a standardized way, and XBRL was designed to transport and store business data in a standardized way.
XBRL is bringing about a dramatic change in the way people think about exchanging business information. Financial disclosures are a prime example of an industry built around a paper based process that is being pushed into the technological age. This transition involves a paradigm shift from the pixel perfect world of building unstructured reports to a digital world where structured data is dominant.
One of the ongoing challenges faced by those preparing financial statements or other business reports with XBRL is managing change within the source taxonomy. In existing business reporting systems and methods using XBRL, migrating an XBRL representation of a business document from a current or older XBRL taxonomy to a new updated taxonomy is a laborious and error-prone task. Because of the complexities, the time and expense associated with migrating XBRL documents from one taxonomy to a new taxonomy has traditionally been very high, resulting in many XBRL documents continuing to be based upon deprecated taxonomies rather than being updated to the latest taxonomies.